Does your business make you feel overwhelmed and stressed the (bleep) out? Do you find
yourself saying things like, “I feel left behind” or “I need to catch up”?
Well good, welcome to the club! Today I’ll show you exactly what I do to remedy business overwhelm,
so you can keep calm and profit on!
When I was a little kid, I was really messy, and when my mom would force me to clean up
my room, I remember staring across a sea of action figures and dirty clothes, frozen,
not knowing where to begin. I spent so much time deciding where to start that I never
even took action. Sound familiar? Sometimes there’s just so much on the to do list that
gets piled up, we become frozen in action and you don’t even know where to begin.
Well before we discover how to effectively take action and clean this cluttered and messy
room, we must first discover the source of the problem; how the room got so darn messy
in the first place. And the answer is simple; in some point in the past, we made commitments,
either to others or ourselves, that we just didn’t follow through on. If young James
had committed to being “clean”, well he failed to follow through on that commitment
every single time he threw his clothes on the floor instead of putting them in the hamper.
It’s in those moments that he failed on his commitments and that contributed to his
overwhelm. When you acknowledge that every action item or “to do” item that leaves
you feeling overwhelmed in your life today is simply a failed commitment from your past,
something you agreed to but didn’t follow through, the solution becomes really, really
simple: Only commit to what is realistic for you and your time in the present moment.
This is why you hear so many people tell you about the power of “saying no”. It’s not that
“no” is powerful, it’s that saying “yes” when it really should be “no” takes away
your power. It’s as simple as managing expectation and being realistic and honest with others
and yourself. It’s simple, yet so few people actually do it.
So let’s go ahead and put this into context. You wake up in the morning and you have your
to do list right in front of you. After your morning routine you’re super, super clear
on what your big action items for the day really are. Let’s say it’s to write your
weekly newsletter. This is a commitment you’ve made to yourself and your readers: I will
write this newsletter each and every week. Then, something happens. Someone hacks your
server and your website goes down. You're on the phone with your customer support for
like two hours by the time your website is back up, you have a call with a client and
no have time to write your newsletter. You feel behind, you experience overwhelm. But
why? Well, it’s because you failed on your commitment. Guess what, this stuff happens
to every single one of us everyday, but with one distinction: Some people stress out and
break down and they experience overwhelm, while others stay focused and carry on. The
latter group are simply clear on their commitments and the power of keeping their words to themselves
and others. In the scenario I gave the solution is simple: if a business problem like my “server
crushing” occurs, I can simply choose to A) Honor my word, and still write my newsletter
first or B) Honor my word and let my subscribers know that my newsletter will be late. That’s
it, plain and simple.
Now, here’s a real example of this and how it happened to me when I was a little bit
younger. Back in college, it I was a bartender, most people know this, and my manager was
a huge stickler for tardiness. In fact he told us that if we were ever late, termination,
getting fired, was a the huge possibility. And sure enough, one day I found myself running
behind. I was rushing out the door and speeding to get to the restaurant, and I was totally
stressed. I decided to call my manager and let him know that I would be about 10 minutes
late and then I was truly sorry. His response? “Okay, thank you.” In that moment, no
more stress and guess what, I wasn’t fired. You see if you’re overwhelmed, the solution
is not to bury your head into your work and figure how to be more productive and do, do,
do, do, do— that doesn’t contribute to the solution. All you need to do is be present
and conscious to the commitments you are making to yourself and others in each and every moment.
Anything that is “past due”, honor your word and let the involved parties know when
the new due date will be— choose a date and time that is realistic and possible. And
do the same for yourself. If you're a person who tends to be hard on yourself, like me,
it’s fine, you simply need to create more realistic expectations for yourself. And if
you still have the question, “Okay James, but I still have all this stuff on my to do
list that needs to get done, what now?” Well guess what, it’s not going to be answered
in this video. You see the intention here was to eliminate that feeling of overwhelm
from your life, not get better at just getting more stuff done. Because the scary truth is
this: it never gets done, there’s always something left to do. The goal is to not sit
in a place of “I can’t do it” or “I don’t enough time.” So, it’s simple
really: become fully conscious to all of the commitments you are making to yourself and
to others and honor your word. I guarantee that you will immediately feel less overwhelm
and less stress in your life. Remember, you chose to become an entrepreneur because you
demanded a better lifestyle for yourself. Overwhelm is a common symptom of owning a
business, but it doesn’t have to be your experience. So if you have any questions about
this video or you want to leave a comment, go ahead and type it in the comment box below.
And thank you so much for watching this video, and make sure to subscribe because we got
plenty more videos coming your way!